


Light me up a cigarette

by Lilly_White



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:37:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilly_White/pseuds/Lilly_White
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[New fic] In which Angeal compares himself to a rickety old shed, and Genesis pretends not to understand why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light me up a cigarette

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from 'I'm not Yours' by Angus and Julia Stone. First part of a series of Genesis/Angeal short stories.

I wonder why you don’t write any more.

You were always so adamant about justifying your writing as something more than a hobby. Something about taking the clichés that spill out of our mouths and moulding them into something more bearable. It’s funny, you would say, how we can’t bear to hear the same thing being said twice (especially imperatives – you were never really very good with orders) but when the same recurring motif touches us from beneath the black wall of letters on a page, we feel validated, right, somehow. We hate predicting what someone will say because that means they lack substance – we hate when someone predicts what we’ll say, because that means we’re too transparent. But regarding the written word, we all nod and smile like a ring of wizened old men staring at our belly buttons, wondering at the great riddle of us all having the same one.

I’m smiling at you now because I can’t help thinking of how ticklish you used to be, and my finger’s itching to hook into your belly button just to see you squirm like when we were kids. You’d fly off on a rampant rage for nothing at all in those days. Now, well, to be realistic you’d probably just tell me to piss off and go back to your cigarette. But it still makes me grin to think back on it.

The thing is, I used to know which buttons to press (or hook, or dig into). Now every day I’m watching you, watching him; your inspiration, your deity, and nothing I might say can turn your head around all the way. I’ve tried to tell you, but I’m not sure you’ve noticed how he’s been holding your old muse by the throat, choking the life out of her with leather-clad fingers so that she might not contaminate you with something as dangerously creative as sincerity. But you won’t listen to me, because you’re an arse, and I don’t think you ever did, really.

Don’t worry, I never believed that you came to Midgar because you wanted to stay with me. Your eyes have always been full to the brim with adoration, but never for me, and I only ever followed you into hero worship because then I could get an indirect taste of it. Like that old game of calculating who you’ve kissed, indirectly, tasting that person’s faint residue passed down through the countless chain of lips-on-lips-on-lips. (And I’m pretty sure we’ve both indirectly kissed President Shinra by now - though seeing what you get up to lately, I’m not even sure I should bring that up.)

You were always too sincere with me, and I think that’s how I knew I wasn’t the one you wanted. You never cared to make an impression with me, and while it hurts to consider it, I don’t think you’ve ever needed anyone as much as you need me. You’ll never admit it verbally, but you’ve already admitted it countless times – clutching beer bottles in our living room, the light slanting over your self-disgusted snarl – clutching my arms with the same squeaky-tight grip that could break glass. I watch you spin from bleak to delirious, from happy to suicidal and all I can do is hold out a finger and touch you, try to halt the relentless spin with a little friction, and even though you’ve never noticed my bloody fingertips you’ll still hold onto me and bury your head against my chest to hide how much you need it. And that’s what makes me continue to reach out, even though everyone tells me to stop.

Sometimes I wonder how you can trust me so blindly to remain the same – your unchangeable, unbreakable sanctuary. Sturdy wood nailed together by the principles that you never even tried to hammer into your own flesh. But you splash my walls with gasoline every time you come home late, every time you let yourself fall onto the couch next to me stinking of his perfume, buttons tangled with silver. And every time you leave my ears ringing with all those phony reasons why you shouldn’t stop, it’s as though you’re teetering across the rainbow-covered floor with a lighter in your hands, glancing over your shoulder as you tell yourself that you don’t need this place.  
I’m not sure you know, that I’m not indestructible. That I might not put myself back together if you drop that lighter. If you leave me, that is. And you know what pisses me off – I’m not even worried about myself, if you do burn me down, I’m more worried about you. What your face will look like when you come back and see only charred remains of what used to be your safe haven.

You came home late again tonight, and I’d strewn your old poetry across the living room table while I waited for you. I hear from my bedroom, the keys clattering in the usual drawer, the change in your steps as you switch from snappy leather pumps to those moth-eaten slippers that you drag across the floor. The dragging stops when you approach what I guess to be the table, and you give something between a laugh and a cough, the sound of rustling paper filling the silence as your fingers come into contact with those relics of ancient states of mind.  
One of our house rules is never to disturb one another at night – we stopped sleeping together when we were children, and besides, you never really seek out late-night discussions with me anymore. Perhaps my mind has grown too stale for you; perhaps next to him I am far too plain. In any case, I wasn’t expecting you to come bursting in, slamming my bedroom door open with the papers I’d carefully stacked up all crumpled in your fist.

“Where the hell did you find these?” you all but bark at me.

I prop myself up on my elbows, squinting to make out your features in the dark. Your expression is bitter, half hidden under a mess of hair as you stand there.

“They’re a load of shit,” you add when I don’t say anything. “Did you read them?”

“I don’t think they’re shit,” I reply a little groggily, and you sigh, coming in without asking and brandishing the papers at me aggressively, one or two pages fluttering out of your grasp.

“I told you, Ange, I told you not to – oh, for Minerva’s sake.” You sigh again, halfway between anger and embarrassment. “Why did you read them? I thought we’d agreed that what I write is private.”

I can’t really answer that. I know what’s on your mind, only, I wanted to be sure that you knew, too. I wanted to be sure that you’re aware of the staggering denial you’re in, regarding what you think is good for you.

“It’s really good,” I say instead, “It’s – I think it’s publishable material, Gen. You could go somewhere with that if you wrote more.”

 

“Publish it?” You laugh, sitting on the corner of the bed without waiting for an invitation. “You don’t understand anything about writing, do you? I wrote so that I wouldn’t have to feel these things any more. Writing is like fucking exorcism, do you understand? You take what you don’t want to think about, what you don’t want to feel, and you trap it on paper. Trap it in characters, in over-the-top dramatic metaphors, what have you – the whole procedure is more like taking out the garbage than trying to make something worthwhile.”

I stare at you for a moment. “I recognize you a lot more in that writing than how you are now, how you act around people.”

“That’s because you wish I’d stay that unevolved, self-centered twat that you knew when we were kids,” you say with one of those crooked, mocking smiles. “That’s all you ever talk about. Before, before, before. You’re just standing there staring at the chrysalis, wishing it wouldn’t crack.”

“That’s not true.”

“This,” you say, putting the papers in my face again, “This – this isn’t viable. This is a weak, friable state of mind. And the reason I don’t write any more is because I no longer have any of this poison to expel – because I’m fine with how I am, now. How twisted is it that you would prefer me to be some melancholic sap than a happy, outgoing man?”

“You aren’t happy, Gen,” I finally say.

“Bullshit.”

The word comes out with the sharpness of a whiplash, thoughtlessly snapping across my words as though whipping the fingers of an insolent child. I look at you, sitting there in the dark with your shoulders hunched as you glare at me, papers falling across the covers as they slip from your grasp. Your hair fluffs around your neck and tickles your cheekbones, giving you the air of a scruffy child rather than the self-righteous adult you’re trying to be.

“You don’t write any more because you don’t think about what happens to you,” I tell you, because you need to hear it from someone. “You don’t acknowledge pain like you used to. You get hit and you just carry on and that’s fucking wrong, Genesis, that’s just plain dangerous – ”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” you growl at me, then you’re swiping at the papers you’ve dropped, crumpling them up into tight balls as you go and the silence is filled with the aggressive sound of paper tearing between your fingers. “It’s shit, it’s all worthless shit – “

When I grab your wrists you fight against me, wriggling like a cat and hissing at me to stop. But I’ve always been stronger than you, and you sit there with your hair in your face as I keep your wrists down, holding onto your creased poetry as though onto dear life.

“Stop it,” I order you, and you practically snarl at me.

“I don’t know what makes you think I’m this pathetic, fragile little creature that needs comforting but – ”

“Shut up.”

“Angeal – ”

“I said shut up.”

I prize the writing from you, and you watch with a sullen expression as I smooth each page out, folding them patiently before giving them back to you.

“These have value. You have value. And if I find these in the bin, your skinny arse is following suite,” I say. “Now cut me some slack and go sleep. Unless you want to sleep in my bed like when we were 12.”

“Someone’s nostalgic,” you say, and you get up from the bed with your folded papers, toes curling in the air as they search for a hold on your slippers. “I know what I’m doing, Angeal. You know I hate it when you put words in my mouth and thoughts in my head that aren’t there at all, so just – stop trying to make me into some tragic, heartbroken character when I am fine. Everything’s fine. And if everything wasn’t fine then it would be your fault for aggravating me.” You look down at me. “Understand?”

I’m grinning. Better to laugh than cry when faced with such idiocy, I suppose. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Goodnight.”

“Uh-huh.”

And in a dragging succession of steps you’re gone, slamming the door behind you.

…when dawn comes you’ve stolen the covers off me, legs crossing my own, and there are freshly written pages on the living room table, inked trenches slightly loopier than before. But the words are there, and you’re sleeping so soundly that I almost don’t believe it when I don’t find any trace of a Sleep materia in the bed sheets. I try to pull the covers from you, but you hold on tighter, and don’t even budge when I slide an arm around your waist.

Stubborn idiot.


End file.
